Domine ad adjuvandum me festina

Pray for my health. I honestly doubt my ability to get through the day without passing out. And I've never passed out before.

It's my own fault, but still. Pray for me.

Jellicles can, and Jellicles DO.

Last night/this morning, at around 2:30am, I was shamelessly dancing to and belting out highlights from the musical Cats in the Shop Theater at Tisch, along with my friends Miriam, Steven, and Terrence as we refocused lights. Miriam and I singing/dancing/BELTING THE CRAP OUT OF "Macavity" is actually awesome.

Ask me any time and I hate Cats. I loved it when I was a kid, but once I got seriously into theater I adopted the standard, accepted and very valid view that Cats is a silly, superficial, infantile piece of theater. I want nothing to do with any production of Cats.

And yet, it's nice to know that sometimes, riffing off "Mr. Mistopheles" late at night can be a blast.

...as long as it's behind closed doors. I don't want to lose TOO much of my integrity. :)

My chance to survive the night

It's post-classes on Friday, and I STILL feel vaguely competent. Definitely only vaguely, but it's something. (Edit: Someone I deeply respect completely unexpectedly told me today I'm significantly more competent than I feel. These little comments can sometimes help people get through a week. Just be aware.)

I am about to be in tech for three weeks. For four shows. If you're around New York these next three weeks and want to catch something of mine, let me know. Pieces I'm co-directing, sound designing, costume designing, dramaturging, and playing electric violin for are going up. AAAH! But I know I can get through this and even sleep a little bit.

You know how?

BECAUSE I ORDERED 24 CANS OF CHEERWINE!


John Calvin approves.

And give you peace...

For possibly the first time all semester, I feel vaguely competent. I'm not exactly sure why. Staging and Design were particularly captivating today and somehow reassured me that while I don't actually know what I'm doing half the time, it's okay and I know more than I think I know.

I also came to terms with what I have to do as my next step for Tongues today. Which I knew. I always knew, but for various reasons, largely huge class discussions on What Directing Is and What A Director's Role Should Be, I got lost and forgot some of the main reasons I chose this show in the first place, and how that reason relates to my casting. Riiight. Basically, what I have to do is create my own voice methodology. Technique. Theories. Which... duh. Of course. Wanted to do this with my life, I just need to start it now. Which is actually thrilling. I'm not crazy ambitious, not at all.

I think one of the things about today was it seemed so much about not only what we're doing now, but what we will be doing later. I think it's enormously important for those of us in school not to focus on succeeding within our programs, but getting what we need to help us move on outside of school. I like to think of every piece as part of a Kandinsky-esque triangle moving forward, so that any particular piece is not the goal, but the goal is much broader and each piece is working towards it. (Such as the everlasting work to make the Kingdom of God come upon the earth.) So I'm not going to have fully-developed ideas of voice and sound in Tongues. I'm just not, for so many reasons. But it's a phenomenal opportunity to dive in and actively engage myself in that conversation.

My schedule is starting to become daunting. I still have enough time to get things done, but scheduling meetings and rehearsals is becoming ridiculous. These next few weeks are going to be crazy - I'm co-directing a musical that loads in on Sunday, techs that week and plays the first week of November. I'm sound designing a show (and the sound design is enormously complex) that has goes up the same week as the musical. I'm costume designing a show the next week. That leads me up until November 15th, and then I'm very free until Tongues goes up the first week of December (loading in on November 29th). Also, my cast is in various tech weeks for shows they're in and shows their stage managing in these times when I'm very busy as well, so finding rehearsal time is difficult. BUT not impossible because they're also the best people. I've sat down and mapped out how I want to spend the next weeks leading up to tech, and I'm feeling pretty good about it. Also, I probably have a meeting with one of my voice and speech teachers tomorrow. Yay. :)

Hopefully I can keep this confident feeling through Friday, when I have the most intense day of Directing Lab ever. Order my steps in your word, dead Lord. Lead me, guide me, every day.

A voice speaks. A voice he's never heard.

I had an enthralling meeting with one of my teachers last week, to discuss spirituality and ritual in theater, and more specifically, trance. As I was talking about my experience with trance, describing the music that preceeded it, he stopped me to say, "Of course you're interested in this." Knowing that I'm into sound, music, voice, he thought, "Of course you're interested in trance and ritual," because, in the research he's done (which is extensive), a state of trance always has its genesis in sound. This was a huge "DUH!" moment for me. Sound is vital to religious experience. Duh. I'm the child of church musicians, why haven't I thought about this before? Duh, duh, duh.

I'm reading an essay called "Towards a Theology of Listening" about the idea of theosony - the study of God through sound. One of its points is that, in the creation story, sound preceeds sight.

Voice and Speech yesterday was particularly phenomenal and I found myself curious again as to why this obsession has come up. I don't fight it, I'm running with it, but it's not all clear yet. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, my non-studio days, I can be found at PHTS going through a full vocal warmup before my day starts. Ironically, I'm usually in a studio next door to one of the first year voice and speech classes. Today as I finished my warmup, I heard the first year class playing a game with consonants, one I remember playing first year, too. I stopped to listen, and a mysterious joy started welling up, because the sounds of that game seemed to be one of the most beautiful things I had heard. I still have not quite unpacked why, but I know it has to do with the following statement:

In the beginning was the Word.

The Word was with God, and the Word WAS God. The Word became flesh ad dwelt among us. Then the Word entered us through the fire of the Holy Spirit and we began to speak the Word. We began to speak God.

We can speak God.

This process is enshrouded with mystery and tainted by our own human imperfections. But to speak the God within us... what a call. The purification, the training and trials required for that, are daunting. But how beautiful would that voice be?

The greatest of adventures of my life

In middle school, I had two main ambitions in life. One was to be a writer. One was to be a rock star.

I have kept up writing with frequency. For seven years now, I have participated in National Novel Writing Month and now have three novels in first draft form under my belt. I write poetry, I write plays, I write essays, I write abstract theater pieces. I write blogs! There has never been a time when I've entirely put aside writing, even if it has not been my main focus.

Being a rock star, however, has often taken a back seat.

When I was in seventh grade, I saw the Trans-Siberian Orchestra perform live. TSO, if you don't know, is a metal band (offshoot of Savatage) that mainly does Christmas music and classical pieces. All of their albums are concept albums--three are Christmas stories and one is about Beethoven--and they meld traditional music with heavy metal in astonishing ways. Their Winter tour is structured in two halves - the first half is the entirety of the album "Christmas Eve and Other Stories", fully narrated, and the second half is more traditional rock concert. The first concert I saw was at the Carpenter's Center, the smaller concert venue in Richmond, and was actually relatively small for their shows. (Later, I would see them in Richmond Colesium with pyrotechnics.) I was sitting up in the balcony before the show began (it was just me and my brother), and I saw this white, pointy instrument and I gasped, "IS THAT AN ELECTRIC VIOLIN?!" As a confirmed metalhead in my second year of orchestra, I'd heard of mythical things called electric violins but had never seen one in person.

Indeed, it was an electric violin. Played by the master, Mark Wood.

Let us observe Mark Wood in his rock star glory:



That kick at around 1 minute? Epic.

That particular violin in that video is one of Mark's personal collection and is called the "Spaceolin". Mark Wood makes his own violins, and, indeed, has his own violin line. I discovered this shortly after the concert. The white violin I saw was the Viper violin.

The Viper violin is the ultimate rock star violin. It's shaped like a flying V electric guitar, comes with up to seven strings, with or without frets, and has a unique shoulder support system so your neck is entirely free, allowing you to sing and play at the same time. With seven strings, you can play lower than a cello. Frets are great for both the look and for extremely fast playing in strange lighting situations. For me, it was love at first sight.

I wanted one. I wanted one so badly. I wanted one so badly that I pestered my parents all the time. In the epic battle that was the cleanliness of my room, this conversation came up multiple times: Me: "You know what would get me to clean my room?" My Mother: "We're not buying you a Viper." I became an active member of the Wood Violin forums, to the point where when I met Mark Wood in the autograph line after the TSO concert I went to in eighth grade, he recognized me from my username. I would sit in class and calculate how long it would take me to save up my allowance to buy a Viper. I think it was generally about five years.

My dream Viper had frets, and six strings. I was not opting for the seventh string because of how wide that makes the neck and because you have to use bass rosin on the bow because it's so thick. Six strings would do just fine. I never quite solid on color. For a long time I thought black, but since I was wearing all black at that time I realized it would blend in with my clothing. For a while I thought electric blue. I think I eventually "decided" on blood red... with a bit of a fade in from black effect.

As I got into theater, the rock star plans started to fall to the wayside. Many of my middle school friends are surprised that I still don't have a band. But I would continue to go to TSO concerts. I went every year from 7th grade through 11th grade. A Viper violin still remains, almost as a recurring joke, on my Christmas list.

Mark Wood has started an "electrify your strings!" program where he comes around and does workshops with schools. He was coming to a middle school near me my senior year of high school... the middle school I would have attended, in fact, had I not gone to the "gifted" program. One of my best friends from middle school's mother worked at that middle school, so she talked to the orchestra teacher and got us in. I skipped show choir that day (with intense explainations to Becker about how important this was to me), to spend a day with middle schoolers and Mark Wood. It was phenomenal. After the master class, all the middle schoolers left to catch the bus, so my friend and I helped strike and hung out with Mark Wood for a good while, just chatting. When I explained to him my obsession with his violins, he said, "Oh man! I wish I'd known, I would've had you up here on an electric!" He also gave me advice on taking the violin on a plane, as I was flying with my violin to New York that weekend. ("Yeah, I've always taken it as a carry-on and they've never questioned me. And I look a lot more suspicious than you.")

When I saw TSO again my freshman year of college, I thought, "Why isn't theater more like this? Why isn't theater as exciting as a rock concert?" The theatricality of rock concerts fascinates me (my love of Alice Cooper) and thrills me. I just got my ticket to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra on Long Island in December. I'm thrilled. I will probably scream my voice out. This is a big deal as I've ALWAYS been paranoid about vocal health. When I wanted to be a cheerleader in 4th grade (I bet you never thought you'd see me type THAT!) I wasn't allowed to because of the screaming. And while I will work to keep my voice supported... I will also probably go crazy. (Especially because Chris Caffery knows how to work a crowd.)

I once went to see a show entirely because it was a musical done by GrooveLily. The lead singer/violinist plays a Viper, so I'd known of GrooveLily for years because of my obsession with these instruments... and then GrooveLily got into doing theatre. Awesome. I e-mailed her about how excited I was to see a Viper in a theater piece, and she was enormously sweet both via email and in person.

Sometime last year, I was obsessing over Wood Violins again. I was seriously getting back into playing violin, but I was at a pause because my violin, the same violin we rented back in middle school, was crap. It was good for a beginner's instrument, but advancing any more would be next to impossible - something the orchestra teacher at that middle school confronted me with when he tuned it for the master class. He refused to hear my excuses about not being able to afford a new violin, because if I was serious about this, I would get a better violin somehow. And I realized that if I'd been serious about it back in middle school, I would've had that Viper by now. Then, poking around on the all-too-familiar Wood Violins website, I saw a new violin.

WHAAAAT?!

Well, not exactly new, but a less expensive version of one of his other violins, the Stingray (which was always my second choice after the Viper). It's called a Stingray SV4, and it's an entry-level electric violin. With violins, electric or otherwise, I'd shy away from anything "inexpensive"... except that having been so intently into Mark Wood's company for so long, having talked with him, I know that he would not put his name on something that was not quality. Period. The Stingray SV4 comes in either black or red, it has four strings, no frets, so it's more basic. The Stingray SV4 kit comes with the violin, a bow, a case, an amp custom voiced by Mark for electric violin, a wah-wah pedal also designed by Mark... all for $800. That's actually unreal, and again, I trust Mark for his quality.

So I said to myself that by the end of the next school year (this year!), I would have this violin. I gave myself a deadline or else it wouldn't happen. I've been hoarding money ever since.
I'm sound designing a show this semester (what? Me, sound designing? Never!). We were preparing for an upcoming workshop, which was basically a run with limited tech. One of the requirements was that all of the sound had to be made live and in the space - no prerecorded sound. This piece includes short dance sequences, we needed sound for those... so I became a bit of a one man band. I actually learned how to play a small bit of electric guitar for this workshop. (I hope to never play guitar again - I think it's the most miserable thing in the world and I don't know why so many people voluntarily do that to their hands.) I also played my (crappy) violin. (No, really, it's bad. Even violinists who are significantly better than I am sound bad on this.) As I was lamenting this when we pulled it out for rehearsal, I said, "But by the end of this year I'll have an electric violin. Wish I had it for this show!" and then the director's ears perked up.

Basically. If we decided it would be really good for the show, he would be willing to pay for the violin, provided I paid him back since I was already planning on buying one.

After the workshop, we decided that it could really really help. We're adding prerecorded sound back in but largely playing with the contrast between live sound and prerecorded sound, which has been part of our discussion from the beginning, actually.

Researching now, though, I found out that this particular violin was in high demand, most people were awaiting new shipments of them. The Wood Violins website said only a handful of dealers had them. So I prayed and hoped that of all the dealers, Sam Ash in Times Square would have them.

Sam Ash in Times Square is huge. I walked into the Guitar/Keyboard section, asked where I would go if I was looking for electric violins, and he told me, "Across the street."

Yup.

At the other part of the store ACROSS THE STREET.

I saw it in the window as I jaywalked. And when I asked the lady at the counter about it (making sure it was a Stingray SV4 instead of a normal Stingray), she asked me if I wanted to try it. And I tried REALLY hard to remain cool looking. I'm not sure how successful it was. But here's the thing:

I've come so close to playing a Wood Violin before. There was the master class, and also a friend I met on the Wood Violin message board back in middle school is a year younger than me, owns a Viper, and now goes to NYU. We met awkwardly in person at a dining hall last year, and I've never had the courage to ask if I can try her instrument. There's always been this reverence and therefore fear about it.

I tried to stay cool. I tried to pretend like I was actually testing things instead of just marveling at its tone quality. And when I talked to the woman, I asked really intelligent questions from my nearly 8 years of obsession over violins such as these. Then I told her I'd probably be back the next day, handed the violin back, and raced downtown to the design meeting that I was late for (but with blessing because I was researching options for the show).

Today, I dressed in my best rock star outfit (yes, I have rock star outfits. Don't judge) to go uptown to purchase the violin. It ended up coming to about $640, which is PHENOMENAL for everything I got. I then proceeded to take it down to my studio to tune it and nuzzle it. It's actually an extremely nuzzle-able violin.

In many ways, I'm still in shock. I've been playing around with the amp and effects (it goes to 11!), working to learn the different vocabulary of an electric instrument, and it's phenomenal. Being outside of this world for such a long time, the transition into it is so much more magical. Facebook exploded with my announcement, with friends from middle school and the Mark Wood forums sharing in my joy. It's very much like I have a child... and I generally have little to no motherly instinct. I don't squeal when I see babies. But I don't want to let this violin out of my sight... not because it's an expensive, well-crafted piece of equipment, but because of all the history, all the build up for pretty much half of my cognizant life.

She's beautiful. She's mine. Her name is Mary, but she goes by Ax. We're learning how to work with each other. And I was right... the feeling of pulling a bow across the strings and hearing it reverberate in its distortion long after you've stopped the bow IS as cool as the rock stars make it seem.


THIS IS MY SERIOUS ROCK STAR FACE. RAWR.

Don't dream it, be it.

Tomorrow, a dream that I've had for almost eight years is finally coming true.

Stay tuned!

You shall go out with joy!

Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth!
Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua.
Hosanna in excelsis!
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.
Hosanna in excelsis!

Gloria in excelsis Deo
et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis!
Laudamus te,
benedicimus te,
adoramus te,
glorificamus te.
Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam,
Domine Deus, Rex caelestis,
Deus Pater omnipotens.

Quoniam tu solus Sanctus, tu solus Dominus, tu solus Altissimus, Iesu Christe, cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei Patris.

All praise to you, eternal Father,
through your Son, Jesus Christ,
who with you and the Holy Spirit
lives and reigns forever!


All honor and glory is yours, now and forever.

Been working so hard

Finally, for your viewing pleasure...

THE MONTREAT 2009 AV/AUD OLYMPICS

aka: the 10 person human pyramid was caught on tape!

AV/AUD Olympics from Josh Richard on Vimeo.

This was my summer and I loved it.

Note AV Crew trying to plug XLRs into a table.

Happy and blest

Yes. Yes, okay, yes, it's post 1am and I am still awake and blogging. Yes, yes, my day went from 9am - midnight today with two 30 minute breaks. Yes, I'm working on six shows even though I said I wouldn't (though I maintain that the sixth show is very different, because it is. It's significantly later and involves tech stuff I haven't done since this summer and I miss). But this year is much different than last year. Tonight, I walked home grinning like a maniac because the two rehearsals I had this evening were phenomenal. I work with the most inspiring people. Truly. They are great blessings in my life. The conviction that my life and work are God's to use to mold me and those around me keeps me refreshed.

The fear I experience almost constantly scraping at my stomach is from a lack of obedience. The suffering and humiliation that I experience are molding me into a more perfect vessel. It is often very, very hard to endure, and I don't suffer well, but I am working on it. Becoming obsessed with saints and suffering, of course... but starting to understand that obedience is more important.

"I remember some time ago a very big group of professors came from the United States and they asked, 'Tell us something that will help us.' And I said, 'Smile at each other.' I must have said it in a very serious way, I suppose, and so one of them asked me, 'Are you married?' And I said, 'Yes, and I sometimes find it very difficult to smile at Jesus because He can be very demanding.'" - Mother Teresa

He's the most demanding, actually, but that's another post for another time.

Even in the rough patches, which are more frequent than I'd like them to be, I do have the assurance of God even when I slip so far from what He has revealed to me. That makes this year so much different than the last. He has surrounded me by people who expand everything I ever thought I knew, and that's beauty.

Also, I got to use a chop saw today for the first time since my many years on high school set construction crew. I missed it!

A thousand things [you've] never said

My father is a terribly interesting person. He's done everything. No, really. From playing in Broadway pit orchestras to doing carpeting for senators, he's done a lot and usually has a lot of crazy stories. ("I wouldn't be surprised if your father was a figure skater in Taiwan." - Emily) He knows a little bit about everything, and is really useful to have around. My father is also incredibly perky.

Many of you know my father. (One of you IS my father.) He's silly, punny, fun to be around. This is great, until you're a teenager who is distinctly NOT a morning person. My father is the kind of guy who will wake up singing "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning", whereas my morning showtune is definitively "Oh, How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning". This is a clash. Also, when you hear the exchange, "How are you?" "I'm Duane fine," so many times, it gets a bit old. There have been definite tensions between me and my father.

One of the things I noticed about my father over this summer was how much he loves interacting with people. This is something I'm not particularly good with, as I've mentioned earlier in this blog. Often, my mother and I have been frustrated when he immediately asks a salesperson for help finding something. Whereas we want to discover it for ourselves, he enjoys other people so much that the joy for him is having a connection with the person. And it works. Everyone at my dentist office (who are all enthusiastic, lovely people) loves him for how personable he is. They're happier when he's there, he's happier, it works. Since I've understood by now that I should just not be around him in the morning, I've grown to really appreciate this enthusiasm of my father.

Mushiness aside, my father is full of surprises, such as this phone conversation of last year:

Me: I'm becoming obsessed with William Morris.
My Mother starts laughing.
Me: What?
My Mother: Your father is obsessed with William Morris.
Me: WHAT?!
My Father: I'm obsessed with William Morris!
Me: But I'M obsessed with William Morris!

Later, he reveals to me that he once found a FIRST EDITION KELMSCOTT PRESS WILLIAM MORRIS BOOK in a used book store for next to nothing and largely paid for grad school by selling it.

(ps, Dad: I stole the William Morris books you left on one of the bookshelves in my room. So if you're wondering where they are... they're in New York now. :P )

Today, he dropped this bombshell:

My Father: I haven't seen a production of Tongues since... 1978, I think....
Me: ...wait, 1978?
My Father: Yes.
Me: ...you saw the original production of Tongues!?
My Father: Well, yes--
Me: YOU SAW THE ORIGINAL PRODUCTION OF TONGUES AND YOU DID NOT MENTION IT UNTIL NOW?!
My Father: Well, I hadn't connected it...
Me: ...I don't even know what to say to you right now...

...right. Of COURSE he did. Of course.

I've discovered that the secret to directing is being brilliant, all the time. That's all you have to do as a director. Of course, most of the time we're not brilliant so we just make it up and hope no one notices. Today in rehearsal there was an absolutely beautiful moment of actor/lighting collaboration like nothing I'd ever seen before. Stunning. I wish I could take credit for it.

I actually do not have rehearsal tomorrow. I don't understand this concept.

Take one step and see what it gets you

For every step forward there are two steps back. Progress, in the immediate, is never linear. You can tackle your demons one day and let old habits sneak in the next. Today was the latter, for me, and it was hard to bear and I hated every second of it. I had a moment that was downright Catholic - I became immensely curious about praying to a saint to intercede for me because I had fallen back so much that I was not worthy to speak directly to God.

Sigh.

But, as life is... I have two more presentations today, so hopefully I can reclaim ground and move forward. My enforced positivity time was right after feeling like I'd regressed, so it was difficult to get into it, but I think extremely useful.

I'm taking on another show. BUT, this one goes up significantly after the rest of mine are done, and it's an audio engineering position for one of my friends' project. I'm actually enormously excited about this. I never thought I'd say it, but I miss microphones and DI boxes and sound boards. Someone used a mic in class today and I was thrilled. I also want to learn much more than I already know about sound systems - particularly setting them up in indoor spaces, since we didn't do much of that at Montreat. The major speaker signal issues would be in the Aud, which we didn't actually set up. Luckily, our new Studio Theater Manager is a sound designer, so between him and this show, I should get a good bearing on that.

Had a conversation with a second year yesterday that was phenomenal. Second years are all required to assistant design, so they're freaking out about finding designers and projects to assist on. I am looking for cool people and good conversation, so I do this thing where I meet second years for coffee, generally have a good time, and then they work on one of my projects. It works for all of us. The conversation tended a lot towards religion and trance and it was very refreshing, because I don't have as many of those conversations here. It's wonderful to know and connect with religious-minded individuals here.

ETA: unfortunately, the two presentations weren't much better. God does have a way of humbling us.